June 11, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

REAL VS. PHONY

If you need any further evidence of the disintegration of journalism, just look at how they cover the presidential candidates. John Edwards has been portrayed as phony in the media because he talks about poverty, but lives in a big house and gets expensive haircuts. Fred Thompson, another marginally-talented actor, is "authentic" according to the media, but doesn't even drive his real car for photo-ops. George W. Bush was "authentic" and the kind of guy you'd have a beer with, but "compassionate conservatism" was always a sham. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.commondreams.org:

For example, the case of F.D.R. shows that there’s nothing inauthentic, in the normal sense of the word, about calling for higher taxes on the rich while being rich yourself. If anything, it’s to your credit if you advocate policies that will hurt your own financial position. But the news media seem to find it deeply disturbing that John Edwards talks about fighting poverty while living in a big house.

On the other hand, consider the case of Fred Thompson. He spent 18 years working as a highly paid lobbyist, wore well-tailored suits and drove a black Lincoln Continental. When he ran for the Senate, however, his campaign reinvented him as a good old boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat.

But Mr. Thompson’s strength, says Lanny Davis in The Hill, is that he’s “authentic.”

Oh, and as a candidate George W. Bush was praised as being more authentic than Al Gore. As late as November 2005, MSNBC’s chief political correspondent declared that Mr. Bush’s authenticity was his remaining source of strength. But now The A.P. says that Mr. Bush’s lack of credibility is the reason his would-be successors need to seem, yes, authentic.

UNVARNISHED U. S. HISTORY

In a few weeks we'll celebrate Independence Day, which again will be replete with fireworks and flags and self-congratulatory tributes to our greatness and dedication to freedom. But a truly great nation is honest about its faults. We shouldn't need propaganda to prop up our national self esteem. We need to face up to slavery in our past, to inequality, to a sometimes vicious foreign policy, and to our place among the community of nations. This article by Jason Miller is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Capitalism, which has evolved into its utterly reprehensible advanced stages here in the United States, is intellectually buttressed by the ridiculous notion that people acting on two of the most despicable traits of humanity, greed and selfishness, will enhance the commonweal. The current state of affairs in the United States demonstrates otherwise. Despite the slight doses of socialism which have mitigated the abject suffering inflicted by relatively unfettered capitalism during the Gilded Age, and despite the fact that we are the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity, there are still over a million homeless human beings, millions experience hunger and food insecurity, nearly fifty million lack a viable means to obtain our outrageously expensive medical care, our leading indicators of health are amongst the lowest of industrialized nations, urban public school systems are in a state of crisis and decay, and, as Katrina so clearly indicated, we are content to spend most of our hard-earned tax dollars on industrialized murder, blame victims, and leave the suffering to die, even here at home.